Grumman FM-2 Wildcat - Erickson Aircraft Collection - Madras, OR
N 44° 40.212 W 121° 08.957
10T E 646699 N 4947980
This WWII vintage aircraft is housed at the Erickson Aircraft Collection located at the Madras Airport.
Waymark Code: WMPC8K
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 08/08/2015
Views: 1
The
Erickson Aircraft Collection relocated approximately 20 aircraft to the Madras Airport in 2014. This collection of mostly WWII vintage planes were previously housed in a military hanger at the Tillamook Air Museum (NW coastal town in Oregon).
The following verbiage is taken from the Erickson Aircraft Collection website to describe its history:
FM-2 Wildcat
NARRATIVE
The Grumman Wildcat, first of the Grumman “Cats,” marked the U.S. Navy's transition from biplanes to the modern era of aircraft carrier borne seapower. The September 1937 prototype was a radical redesign of an earlier Grumman biplane, the F3F. In 1939, an improved version of the aircraft, powered by a supercharged Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp, 1,200 hp. radial engine, performed well and soon went into production at the Grumman plant in Bethpage, Long Island. The Wildcat first became operational with the British Royal Navy, where it was named the Martlet. The British acquired 120 of the aircraft originally ordered by France and Greece, and with additional British orders, the Martlet served the Royal Navy well in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The Wildcat first saw combat with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviators when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on7 December 1941. The Wildcat was inferior in many ways to its main rival in the Pacific - the Mitsubishi Zero. The Japanese plane was faster and more maneuverable, but the Wildcat was better armed, sturdier, and carried protection for the fuel supply and pilot, a Japanese omission. Wildcat pilots performed admirably against a superior foe and continued in U.S. service until the end of the War being continually updated and improved. The definitive version, the F4F-4, was armed with six .50 inch machine guns and had a top speed of 318 mph. In May 1943, production of the Wildcat was shifted to General Motors' Eastern Aircraft Division at Linden, New Jersey. These airplanes were designated FM-1 and FM-2. Together, GM and Grumman produced over 8,000 aircraft. Two interesting features of the Wildcat are wings that fold back along the fuselage to allow for easier carrier storage and the manually operated landing gear. A pilot had to crank a cockpit-mounted wheel 29 times to raise or lower the apparatus.
SPECIFIC HISTORY
The museum’s Wildcat is a General Motors built FM-2 accepted by the Navy on 26 July 1945 and transferred to Naval Air Station Tillamook to be put into storage. Stricken from the Navy’s inventory in 1946, it was sold to the Wolf Point Montana School District in 1955 for $38.20 and later sold to a private owner in Washington State for $208.60. Before coming to the museum’s collection for restoration in 1991, it was owned by several individuals and used for various activities including agricultural spraying.
This plane has an inventory page at Warbirdregistry.org here
Each aircraft contains its own interpretive display and I've included a picture of it which contains additional info on this aircraft.
This collection is definitely worth the visit for any aircraft enthusiast.